1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to insulating products, and more particularly to window insulators comprising an insulator core of lightweight rigid insulating materials and/or flexible foam materials, the flexible foam materials being employed at least around the periphery of the core, enclosed by a cover for placement in a window of a house or other structure for blocking the entry of sunlight into the respective room or other interior portion of the structure, for reducing the level of sound energy passing through the window in order to better acoustically isolate the interior of the structure, and for substantially preventing or reducing the transfer of heat through the window in order to better thermally isolate the interior of the structure.
2. Background Art
It is sometimes necessary or desirable to reduce or substantially eliminate the sunlight which enters a room or other interior portion of a building or structure, such as a house or other habitable enclosure, from the exterior thereof. Such blockage of sunlight may be desirable, for example, if one of the inhabitants of the structure worked nights and was required to sleep during daylight hours, if he or she were ill and desired a low level of natural illumination to facilitate bed rest, or simply for the privacy of such persons. In addition, the personal taste of the inhabitants in decorating may find its expression in a darkened room effect. Various other reasons for desiring or requiring a darkened room during daylight hours will no doubt be apparent to those skilled in the art.
Various means have been employed in the past to reduce or substantially eliminate the amount of sunlight entering a room from the outside, such as window shades, blinds, curtains, shutters, louvers, or the like. A wide variety of each type of such conventional window coverings is now available to the consumer, in a wide variety of materials. For example, horizontal blinds may now be purchased in the mini or micro styles, in addition to the well known wider Venetian style, and vertical blinds are also popular. Shades, for example, may be the well known spring loaded rolled shades, or they may be comprised of bamboo strips, reeds, or the like woven together in a roll-up mat, such as the so-called Roman shades, or they may be pleated or fold-up style, somewhat like an accordian. Materials used for window coverings such as the foregoing include wood, fabric, metals, and plastic. One plastic material which has gained popularity of late, particularly for blinds, is vinyl or a similar plastic.
While each of these prior art types of window covering serves to block, more or less, the sunlight entering a room, and each of them may have other desirable characteristics, relatively speaking, such as an aesthetic appearance, competitive cost, or ease of cleaning or operation, none of them possesses all of these attributes while at the same time providing significant reduction or substantial prevention of the passage of heat through the window, or of the passage of sound energy through the window. That is, none of the prior art window coverings used in the past provides substantially complete blockage of sunlight entering a room, as well as significant thermal and sound insulating of the window, so as to tend to thermally and acoustically isolate the room. In the present days of high-cost energy, particularly that which comes from hydrocarbons, the importance of improving thermal insulation of structures around us need not be belabored here. Suffice it to say that when a structure is supposed to be cooler inside than the exterior air, a bare or inadequately covered window serves as a prime vehicle for the ingress of solar radiation and heat from outdoors, thereby requiring more air conditioning or the like to keep the inside cool. Likewise, when it is supposed to be warmer inside than outside, a bare or inadequately covered window can also serve as a prime vehicle for the loss of heat to the outside, thereby requiring additional heat and energy consumption from the furnace or the like inside the house or other structure in order to compensate for the heat loss.
The desirability or necessity of reducing or substantially eliminating the passage of sound through windows often goes hand in hand with that of darkening the rooms. For example, such sound insulation may be desired to quiet the room to allow the inhabitant to sleep or rest, to produce a desired decorative effect, or simply to reduce or substantially eliminate the so-called noise pollution, that is, unwanted, intrusive background or ambient noise, so prevalent of late. The deleterious effects of noise pollution in a modern industrialized and consumer-oriented society such as ours are well known, and the amount of noise pollution to which we are exposed each day is on the increase.
Various means have been used in the past for reducing the transfer of heat through a window and/or reducing the passage of the sun's rays through a window. For example, double-paned windows with an insulating space between the panes have been used for their insulating effect. Such double-paned windows still allow sunlight through the window, however, along with an amount of the sun's radiant energy. Tinted glass is sometimes used to cut down on the passage of radiant energy through the window. Plastic films or the like which adhere to the surface of a glass window pane have also been used to reduce the passage of radiant energy through the window. It is believed that tinted materials mounted in aluminum frames have been employed for placement on the exterior of a window for the same effect.
As for sound insulation, it is believed that blocks of plastics materials such as polyethylene and polyurethane have been mounted, as by an adhesive or other means, to walls and/or ceilings of a room to reduce the ambient sound level in the room. It is believed that such materials have not, however, been so employed to reduce the passage of sound through a window.